Twitter has released the results of an internal research, according to which, often, the algorithm that shows posts to subscribers, prefers content on the right over those on the left.
"We analyzed millions of tweets from April 1 to August 15, 2020, from accounts managed by elected officials in seven countries: Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States," the social network said in a blog post. .
"The analysts used this data to check which tweets have been amplified on the news stream, when the feed is selected by algorithm versus the chronological one."
Overall, and especially in the pre-electoral periods, the political contents end up having a predominance over the others and, of these, those on the right were shown most frequently. "In six out of seven countries - all except Germany - tweets posted by right-wing political accounts received greater algorithmic amplification than the left when studied as a group." However, Twitter isn't sure what caused this imbalance. The company stressed that: "Algorithmic amplification is not problematic in itself: all algorithms end up by amplifying the content to which they are applied. It becomes problematic if preferential treatment arises as a function of how the algorithm is built,compared to the interactions people have with it. ”Following the research, Twitter said it wants to engage outside researchers so they can help improve the systems behind automatic content organization.